Snoring, Guests Who Won’t Leave and Mysterious Lemons

This weekend was a busy one for S and I; but not nearly as fun as last weekend. It started off on a bit of a sour note for me. After lunch on Friday, I felt like a bag of ass. By the time the work day was over, I was dizzy, nauseous and fighting off a headache.

When I got home, I opened a can of ginger ale and let it go flat. I didn’t feel like eating or making dinner so I took my glass of pop downstairs and watched some TV. S munched on some snacks and when I felt a bit better, we had a nice dinner made up of cereal.

Around 8, S decided that she was going to read a book on the couch. She never got to page one; as soon as she lay down, she was out cold. I spent the next couple of hours surfing online and checking out different tutorials, mostly for using PHP for contact forms. I want to get out of the habit of displaying e-mail addresses as the method of contact on the web sites I work on. I’m beginning to put together my own web site and I think a contact form would definitely look better than an e-mail address.

Sometime after 10, my eyes had had enough of the computer screen and I decided to call it a night. I woke S up from her slumber and we made our way to bed. Once in bed, I found myself laying next to a 94-year-old man. S was snoring something awful. S is a pretty quiet sleeper, she rarely snores and when she does make noise it’s when she’s congested and I can hear her breathing through her nose. I can block that stuff out and fall asleep but there was no blocking that tornado of snoring. I poked her on the shoulder a few times.

“Huh?” S asked, her voice full of sleep.

“You’re snoring,” I said back.

“I am?” she asked innocently.

“Yes,” I replied.

She promptly turned over and fell back asleep. Thankfully, the snoring stopped.

Yesterday morning, I got up and took the pup out for our walk. I noticed as I got out to the front porch that there was a tree planted in our front yard. Part of the permit process for getting the old tree in the back removed, the City made us plant a new tree on our property. This was supposed to happen sometime in May, but being the City, it didn’t happen until this week. I didn’t notice it when I got home on Friday, which isn’t unusual considering how out of sorts I felt, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t planted then. I’m pretty sure that the folks who plant the trees for the City are part of the group that are on strike, so I wonder if a manager from the department came by yesterday morning and planted it.

On our walk, I noticed that it was very humid out; I could tell that rain was not far off. While having my coffee back at the house, it got darker and darker outside. Within minutes of the darkness descending, the skies opened up; the rain was coming down in sheets. We ventured out to the front porch so S could smoke. While out there, there was this extremely loud crackling of thunder and lightning; it scared the hell out of me. The gal pal wasn’t overly impressed either; she wanted to go back inside to the house sooner rather than later.

Our plans for the day involved having S’s friends E and P (a married hetero couple) over for dinner. E was the one who I thought would accompany me to see Franz Ferdinand, but then flaked out because it was going to be standing-room only and on a Monday night. While E and P are overall nice people, they tend to overstay every time they visit. The last time they came over for dinner they didn’t end up leaving till close to 1am. S was practically asleep as she sunk further and further down the couch, but E and P missed the cues that perhaps it was time to go.

Between the Franz flake out and the tendency to overstay, I wasn’t exactly ecstatic about their visit. Nonetheless, S and I picked up some groceries for dinner and tidied up around the house.

Not long after they said they would arrive, there was a knock on our front door. The gal pal was very excited to see P as she usually spends a fair bit of time on his lap whenever we see each other.

The evening went well; conversation flowed well as we talked about a variety of topics ranging from the City strike, work, the deaths of Michael Jackson and Martin Streek, amongst others. When it came time to barbeque, the group joined me out in the backyard. By that time, the sun had moved on and the breeze made it an enjoyable spot to be in.

Dinner ended up being a feast; we had potatoes, chicken breasts, salad, corn and naan bread. I didn’t realize we were making so much food; seeing it spread out on the table surprised me a bit.

We ate until we were stuffed. And then there was coffee and dessert. S and I don’t mess around when it comes to feeding our guests.

We had discussed heading to the basement and watching the movie Blindness, but we never got around to it. We just sat around the table talking. As with previous visits, the conversation stopped flowing as smoothly as it had earlier on in the visit. There were a few instances of long silence. Most people would take that as a sign to call it a night; not E and P, they just keep bantering on. Finally at around 11, P suggested they head out. Even then, E kept talking for about twenty minutes before she collected her things and left.

While walking them out , S took her cigarettes and ashtray out to the porch to have a smoke. E and P continued to chat when I noticed a spider crawling on the railing. “Oh, look, a spider,” I said, forgetting about E’s intense fear of spiders.

“Ok then, I’ll be going now!” E exclaimed as she hurriedly walked down the front steps.

I’m thinking for future visits from E and P, it may be handy to have a spider or two around.

After finishing her cigarette, we went back inside to tidy up and then headed off to bed. Unlike the previous night, there wasn’t any crazy-ass snoring happening while allowed me to fall asleep pretty quickly.

We had brunch plans out in the ‘burbs with S’s friends K and P this morning. Like last weekend, we had planned to drop off our garbage at the dump on our way out. The rock I brought back from E and G’s place didn’t keep the raccoons out of the green bin the first night I put it on the lid. The raccoons just pushed it along the lid and helped themselves to the contents inside the bin.

Giving it another try, I placed the rock directly on top of the latch. I wasn’t sure if that would help, but the next morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see that it did indeed keep the raccoons out. For the rest of the week, that’s what I’ve been doing and our garbage bags inside the bin were intact. Had the rock not worked, my next step would have been to invest in a pellet gun. (I hope the crazies at PETA don’t come across this post.)

Since the raccoons had gotten in that first night, the bottom of the bin was really fucking gross and cleaning it out this morning left me feeling a little green. I had to triple bag the garbage to make sure it wouldn’t leak in the truck and then I sprayed the hell out of the inside of the bin with VIM bathroom cleaner in the hopes that it would kill the bugs that were making a home there.

A quick shower later and we were out the door heading out the ‘burbs. We stopped in at the dump and were greeted by some pretty friendly staff. A few minutes later, we were on our way. I’m happy to report that there weren’t any road rage or incidents of highway shenanigans.

We dropped off the gal pal at P’s place so that she could visit with her brother while we were out. P wasn’t home which was a good sign since S was convinced that she would probably not be ready upon our arrival.

On the way to the restaurant, S expressed hope that K and P would already be there. “We come all the way from Toronto, and we’re always the first ones there,” S said. “It’d be nice to have them be first for a change.”

Surprisingly, both K and P were already at the restaurant, they’d even secured a table for us. We chatted about our weeks and upcoming events. Later on this month, I am going to be playing in a charity softball tournament with K. Since the day will start early and its very far from home, I will be sleeping over at K’s place the night before. We talked about that and our trip next month to the cottage.

P continued with the strangeness she’s been showing of late. She had said that her air conditioner was broken so K and S suggested she leave her windows open; especially at night as the temperature drops. Last night, for example, was quite cool out. “I didn’t want the wind blowing everything around,” P said. She made it sound like she’s got fine China in front of her windows which is definitely not the case.

When we were talking about the cottage, she asked if we were the only ones going. “Who else would be going?” we asked.

“Oh, I don’t know,” P began, “I just wasn’t sure if we were inviting anyone else.”

“Who do you want to invite?” K asked.

“Well, no one, I was just wondering.”

The waitress came by and we let her know that we were ready for our bill. P asked that hers be separate and within seconds of receiving it, she was like, “Ok, gotta go, I’ll see you guys later.”

She was so curmongeny; more so than usual.

After brunch, S, K and I went and did some shopping where we continued to gab and wonder what’s up with P.

Neither S nor I wanted to spend our Sunday afternoon hanging around P’s place, so after our shopping trip, we collected our pup and headed home. Realizing that we didn’t have very many options for dinner, we had to stop in and pick up some items. We stopped in at one of the big chain grocery stores that was close to where we’d been driving. We usually go to a high end grocery store but this particular one today is near the low-end of the the scale. The produce isn’t so fresh, the selection is scare and the prices are low.

While in the store, S turned to me and asked, “do they sell lemons here?!” Apparently, S was unsure what this low-end store sold.

“I’m pretty sure they do,” I said as she walked away in search of the lemons.

“What I want to know is, how can you tell they’re ripe? I mean, they’re sour which is usually how you know they’re not ripe. But in this case, they’re supposed to be sour.”

I just looked at her, a worried expression on my face as I wondered what lead her to that particular train of thought.

“What?” She said. “Do you follow my logic?”

As we pondered the great mysterious of life, we got the remaining items we needed and made our way home.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty quiet. S surfed online and I played around with some Photoshop tutorials as I tried to decide on the layout for my site.

After dinner, S and I were in the kitchen cleaning up and she suddenly burst into laughter. I figured she was laughing about something that had happened this weekend. I was wrong.

“What are you laughing about?” I asked.

“The next time I get the rage, I’m going to call someone a shit stain!” she said as she burst into laughter.

“Where’d that come from?” I asked.

“I have no idea!” she continued to howl.

That’s my baby, always keeping me on my toes.

We’re continuing on with our vegging as another weekend comes to an end. Here’s hoping the week goes quickly.